"The hour--has come--" he murmured.
"Yes, the hour has come, M"sieur!" cried Jean. "The swiftest teams and the swiftest runners in this part of the Northland are on the trail, and by morning the forest people will be roused from here to the Waterfound, from the Cree camp on Lobstick to the Gray Loon waterway!
Drink this, M"sieur. There is no time to lose. For it is Jean Jacques Croisset who tells you that not a wolf will howl this night that does not call forth the signal to those who love our Josephine! Drink!"
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Jean"s thrilling words burned into Philip"s consciousness like fire.
They roused him from his stupor, and he began to take in deep breaths of the chill night air, and to see more clearly. The camp was empty now. The men were gone. Only Jean was with him, his face darkly flushed and his eyes burning. Philip rose slowly to his feet. There was no longer the sickening dizziness in his head, He inhaled still deeper breaths, while Jean stood a step back and watched. Far off in the forest he heard the faint barking of dogs.
"They are running like the wind!" breathed Jean. "Those are Renault"s dogs. They are two miles away!"
He took Philip by the arm.
"I have made a comfortable bed for you in Pierre"s tepee, M"sieur. You must lie down, and I will get your supper. You will need all of your strength soon."
"But I must know what is happening," protested Philip. "My G.o.d, I cannot lie down like a tired dog--with Josephine out there with Lang! I am ready now, Jean. I am not hungry. And the pain is gone. See--I am as steady as you!" he cried excitedly, gripping Jean"s hand. "G.o.d in Heaven, who knows what may be happening out there!"
"Josephine is safe for a time, M"sieur," a.s.sured Jean. "Listen to me, Netootam! I feared this. That is why I warned you. Lang is taking her to Th.o.r.eau"s. He believes that we will not dare to pursue, and that Josephine will send back word she is there of her own pleasure. Why?
Because he has sworn to give Le M"sieur the confession if we make him trouble. Mon Dieu, he thinks we will not dare! and even now, Netootam, six of the fastest teams and swiftest runners within a hundred miles are gone to spread the word among the forest people that L"Ange, our Josephine, has been carried off by Th.o.r.eau and his beasts! Before dawn they will begin to gather where the forks meet, twelve miles off there toward the Devil"s Nest, and to-morrow--"
Jean crossed himself.
"Our Lady forgive us, if it is a sin to take the lives of twenty such men," he said softly. "Not one will live to tell the story. And not a log of Th.o.r.eau House will stand to hold the secret which will die forever with to-morrow"s end."
Philip came near to Jean now. He placed his two hands on the half-breed"s shoulders, and for a moment looked at him without speaking. His face was strangely white.
"I understand--everything, Jean," he whispered huskily, and his lips seemed parched. "To-morrow, we will destroy all evidence, and kill.
That is the one way. And that secret which you dread, which Josephine has told me I could not guess in a thousand years, will be buried forever. But Jean--I HAVE GUESSED IT. I KNOW! It has come to me at last, and--my G.o.d!--I understand!"
Slowly, with a look of horror in his eyes, Jean drew back from him.
Philip, with bowed head, saw nothing of the struggle in the half-breed"s face. When Jean spoke it was in a strange voice and low.
"M"sieur!"
Philip looked up. In the fire-glow Jean was reaching out his hand to him. In the faces of the two men was a new light, the birth of a new brotherhood. Their hands clasped. Silently they gazed into each other"s eyes, while over them the beginning of storm moaned in the treetops and the clouds raced in snow-gray armies under the moon.
"Breathe no word of what may have come to you to-night," spoke Jean then. "You will swear that?"
"Yes."
"And to-morrow we fight! You see now--you understand what that fight means, M"sieur?"
"Yes. It means that Josephine--"
"Tsh! Even I must not hear what is on your lips, M"sieur! I cannot believe that you have guessed true. I do not want to know. I dare not.
And now, M"sieur, will you lie down? I will go to Le M"sieur and tell him I have received word that you and Josephine are to stay at Breuil"s overnight. He must not know what has happened. He must not be at the big fight to-morrow. When it is all over we will tell him that we did not want to terrify him and Miriam over Josephine. If he should be at the fight, and came hand to hand with Lang or Th.o.r.eau--"
"He must not go!" exclaimed Philip. "Hurry to him, Jean. I will boil some coffee while you are gone. Bring another rifle. They robbed me of mine, and the pistol."
Jean prepared to leave.
"I will return soon," he said. "We should start for the Forks within two hours, M"sieur. In that time you must rest."
He slipped away into the gloom in the direction of the pit. For several minutes Philip stood near the fire staring into the flames. Then he suddenly awoke into life. The thought that had come to him this night had changed his world for him. And he wondered now if he was right.
Jean had said: "I cannot believe that you have guessed true," and yet in the half-breed"s face, in his horror-filled eyes, in the tense gathering of his body was revealed the fear that he HAD! But if he had made a mistake! If he had guessed wrong! The hot blood surged in his face. If he had guessed wrong--his thought would be a crime. He had made up his mind to drive the guess out of his head, and he went into the tepee to find food and coffee. When Jean returned, an hour later, supper was waiting in the heat of the fire. The half-breed had brought Philip"s rifle along with his own.
"What did he say?" asked Philip, as they sat down to eat. "He had no suspicions?"
"None, M"sieur," replied Jean, a strange smile on his lips. "He was with Miriam. When I entered they were romping like two children in the music-room. Her hair was down. She was pulling his beard, and they were laughing so that at first they did not hear me when I spoke to them.
Laughing, M"sieur!"
His eyes met Philip"s.
"Has Josephine told you what the Indians call them?" he asked softly.
"No."
"In every tepee in these forests they speak of them as Kah Sakehewawin, "the lovers." Ah, M"sieur, there is one picture in my brain which I shall never forget. I first came to Adare House on a cold, bleak night, dying of hunger, and first of all I looked through a lighted window. In a great chair before the fire sat Le M"sieur, so that I could see his face and what was gathered up close in his arms. At first I thought it was a sleeping child he was holding. And then I saw the long hair streaming to the floor, and in that moment La Fleurette--beautiful as the angels I had dreamed of--raised her face and saw me at the window.
And during all the years that have pa.s.sed since then it has been like that, M"sieur. They have been lovers. They will be until they die."
Philip was silent. He knew that Jean was looking at him. He felt that he was reading the thoughts in his heart. A little later he drew out his watch and looked at it.
"What time is it, M"sieur?"
"Nine o"clock," replied Philip. "Why wait another hour, Jean? I am ready."
"Then we will go," replied Jean, springing to his feet. "Throw these things into the tepee, M"sieur, while I put the dogs in the traces."
They moved quickly now. Over them the gray heavens seemed to drop lower. Through the forest swept a far monotone, like the breaking of surf on a distant sh.o.r.e. With the wind came a thin snow, and the darkness gathered so that beyond the rim of fire-light there was a black chaos in which the form of all things was lost. It was not a night for talk. It was filled with the whisperings of storm, and to Philip those whisperings were an oppressive presage of the tragedy that lay that night ahead of them. The dogs were harnessed, five that Jean had chosen from the pack; and straight out into the pit of gloom the half-breed led them. In that darkness Philip could see nothing. But not once did Jean falter, and the dogs followed him, occasionally whining at the strangeness and unrest of the night; and close behind them came Philip. For a long time there was no sound but the tread of their feet, the sc.r.a.ping of the toboggan, the patter of the dogs, and the wind that bit down from out of the thick sky into the spruce tops. They had travelled an hour when they came to a place where the smothering weight of the darkness seemed to rise from about them. It was the edge of a great open, a bit of the Barren that reached down like a solitary finger from the North: treeless, shrubless, the playground of the foxes and the storm winds. Here Jean fell back beside Philip for a moment.
"You are not tiring, M"sieur?"
"I am getting stronger every mile," declared Philip. "I feel no effects of the blow now, Jean. How far did you say it was to the place where our people are to meet?"
"Eight miles. We have come four. In this darkness we could make it faster without the dogs, but they are carrying a hundred pounds of tepee, guns, and food."
He urged the dogs on in the open s.p.a.ce. Another hour and they had come again to the edge of forest. Here they rested.
"There will be some there ahead of us," said Jean. "Renault and the other runners will have had more than four hours. They will have visited a dozen cabins on the trap-lines. Pierre reached old Kaskisoon and his Swamp Crees in two hours. They love Josephine next to their Manitou. The Indians will be there to a man!"
Philip did not reply. But his heart beat like a drum at the sureness and triumph that thrilled in the half-breed"s voice. As they went on, he lost account of time in the flashing pictures that came to him of the other actors in this night"s drama; of those half-dozen Paul Reveres of the wilderness speeding like shadows through the mystery of the night, of the thin-waisted, brown-faced men who were spreading the fires of vengeance from cabin to cabin and from tepee to tepee. Through his lips there came a sobbing breath of exultation, of joy. He did not tire. At times he wanted to run on ahead of Jean and the dogs. Yet he saw that no such desire seized upon Jean. Steadily--with a precision that was almost uncanny--the half-breed led the way. He did not hurry, he did not hesitate. He was like a strange spirit of the night itself, a voiceless and noiseless shadow ahead, an automaton of flesh and blood that had become more than human to Philip. In this man"s guidance he lost his fear for Josephine.
At last they came to the foot of a rock ridge. Up this the dogs toiled, with Jean pulling at the lead-trace. They came to the top. There they stopped. And standing like a hewn statue, his voice breaking in a panting cry, Jean Jacques Croisett pointed down into the plain below.